Lack of proper safety policies, huge threat to businesses, economy —Expert

A fire and safety expert, Mr Jumade Adejola, has stressed the need for individuals, corporate organisations and governments to give utmost attention to safety, describing lack of proper safety policies and precautions, as constituting huge threat to businesses and the nation’s economy.

Adejola, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Surveillant Fire Limited, attributed some of the fire incidents and other emergencies witnessed in some parts of the country, in the last few years, to lack of proper safety precautions and adequate facilities to respond to emergencies.

The Surveillant Fire Limited boss expressed concerns that despite the increase in the number of high-rise buildings in the nation’s cities, adequate facilities that could be used to respond to accidents and emergencies are not on ground.

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He therefore stressed the need for stakeholders in the built industry to make fire service engineers a key part of the building process, noting that such involvement would go a long way in averting  some fire incidents and accidents, occasioned by lack of proper planning, thereby saving  the nation’s economy of some avoidable pains.

According to him, to further sensitise the public on the need to reduce accidents both in private and public places, some stakeholders in the sector, would be holding an enlightenment programme, tagged Vision Zero, that seeks to reduce the rate of accidents to the minimum level, in Nigeria.

“Vision Zero was a programme that emanated from the Singapore World Safety Conference 2017. It is a vision geared towards total elimination or great reduction of accidents. For instance, if the total percentage of accidents that occur in a year is 60, Vision Zero seeks to reduce it to 10 per cent.

“This we hope to achieve  by increasing the level of awareness and safety precaution. For instance, in the case of high-rise buildings, imagine if everyone takes safety precautions, seriously, there would be minimum accidents. But unfortunately, what we are seeing now is springing up of high-rise buildings without the key area of safety, factored into the building process,” he added.

While advocating for the siting of emergency centres in all the local government areas of the federation, the fire service expert added that governments at the state and local levels could partner with corporate organisations in their areas  to enhance the smooth running of such centres.

“There are private organisations willing to set up these centres as part of their corporate social responsibilities. Government only needs to be proactive to make such things happen,” he added.